Karachi mixes business and bombings

Karachi mixes business and bombings

	Published : Mon, 22 Oct 2007 17:41 By : Agencies Print this Story

KARACHI, Pakistan (AP) - Despite its status as Pakistan's hub for commerce, violence has routinely visited Karachi's seething streets: from political and ethnic bloodletting to its emergence as a hub of Islamic militants and scene of repeated terror attacks post-9/11.

So while the suicide bombing that shattered former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's return from exile shocked Pakistanis, that it happened in this chaotic port city did not.

'We can complain but no matter how hard we try, we cannot cut relations with the city -- it's ours and we know nothing else,' said Khalid Yusuf, a 30-year-old property developer. 'It's dangerous, it's disappointing, but this is our Karachi.'

Karachi was Pakistan's capital until 1960 when it was shifted to the prosaic and purpose-built boulevards of Islamabad, far to the north.

But Karachi is in many senses more important: source of 60 percent of tax revenue and also a lynchpin in the country's turbulent politics. Violence and unrest here helped unravel several national governments.

'People want to destroy Karachi to make a point,' Deputy Mayor Nasreen Jalil, 60, told The Associated Press. 'They know the world's attention is here and nobody would take notice if they attacked a smaller city.'

Bhutto chose Karachi to stage her return to Pakistan's political limelight after an eight-year exile, holding a rally of more than 150,000 people despite her own admission that she had information that Taliban and al-Qaida operatives might try to kill her.

Thursday's night of carnage that left at least 136 dead was among Karachi's bloodiest days.

But the city moves on.

'The people living in Karachi want peace,' said Jalil, taking tea in the drawing room of her plush home in the upmarket Defense district, her English perfected during years of study abroad. 'The dynamic of Karachi is such that life goes on, we can't stop.'

Yet a few miles away, Raiz Babar, 43, picked at his betel-leaf stained teeth as he idled away the day at a busy junction near the city's central prison. He said driving his taxi in the febrile post-bomb atmosphere was still too dangerous.

'For the last three days I have had no wages,' Babar said above the din of car horns. 'If I had a passenger I would not take them because for a fare of 50 or 60 rupees -- $1 -- I could be killed or my taxi damaged.'

Since the blast, angry youths have burned tires and hurled stones at passing vehicles in some quarters of the city.

While last week's bombing was Pakistan's deadliest ever suicide attack, Karachi saw its bloodiest days in the mid-1990s, the culmination of a 10-year period of communal strife. Majority Mohajirs -- descendants of Urdu-speaking people who emigrated to Pakistan from India upon independence from Britain -- clashed with rival ethnic groups.

A prolonged government crackdown on members of the Mohajir-dominated Mutahida Qami Movement party -- the current dominant force in Karachi -- led to thousands of deaths across the city.

Residents recall seeing sacks filled with bodies dumped on roadsides as militias vied for control. At one point, the army sent troops into the city in a failed bid to restore order and many people fled.

The conflict cooled and normality returned to the streets of Karachi, but its notoriety was rekindled following the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States.

The city's Islamic seminaries, or madrassas, were blamed for radicalizing their students, while leading members of al-Qaida, including Sept. 11 cell member Ramzi Binalshibh and other prominent militants, were arrested here. In January 2002, American reporter Daniel Pearl was abducted in Karachi while researching Islamic militancy, and his remains were found in a shallow grave in the city's eastern outskirts.

'Militant groups target Karachi because it's a big city and security has been quite lax here for some time, while the city's biggest (religious school) had close links to the Taliban,' said Zahid Hussain, author of 'Frontline Pakistan: The Struggle with Militant Islam' and a native of Karachi.

Militants angered by President Gen. Pervez Musharraf's support of the U.S.-led war on terror have launched repeated attacks here, including three bombings outside the fortress-like U.S. Consulate. The last came on May 2, 2006, a day before President Bush visited Pakistan. A suicide car bomber rammed the vehicle of a U.S. diplomat, killing him and three others.

With the campaign for Pakistan's parliamentary elections about to crank into gear, further attacks could pitch the country deeper into crisis as it enters a crucial phase in a possible shift from military to civilian rule.

Mohammed Hussain Mehnti, a leader of Pakistan's most popular Islamic party, Jamaat-e-Islami, said that with so much at stake, the bombing against Bhutto is probably not the end of the latest violence in Karachi.

'We are afraid there will be more bloodshed,' he said.